Okay, so obviously slight delay, but not one I thought was worth making a post about. Now that I'm only about thirty minutes behind usual upload time rather than a day plus I should be caught back up going forward. XD
Anyways... sometimes starting off a fight on the wrong foot can put you in a real bad way. For multiple reasons.
When I played in TCG tournaments, eventually I heard the expression "Going on tilt." And boy, did I ever suffer from it. Sometimes, it wasn't even about having lost a match or made a misplay, but someone just getting under my skin.
I still remember a particular instance, to my shame. Because I hadn't just gone on tilt, I was furious and wanted to punch the guy out. The short version is the dude was playing a deck that could win First Turn but was decent even if it didn't, and I loathed such decks at the time. Now it still feels cheap but spamming such decks in competitive play is the only way to get the powers-that-be to ban/errata/whatever and fix the problem.
Anyway, that is not what set me off, but it contributed to it; he subtlety accused me of cheating and threatening to call over a judge. How can it be subtle? There are a lot of once-per-turn actions in Pokémon. At the time, one of those actions (playing a Supporter) had you leave the card in question (Supporter) in play until the end of your turn as a physical reminder.* Only then was it discarded immediately like almost all other Trainer cards are after being played. Playing casually, there are some time savers people use that are technically illegal, like discarding as you declare an attack.** I was worse; I'd gotten sloppy and started discarding prematurely, even if I wasn't going to attack immediately but play another card/activate another effect.
I don't remember the rest of the details. Maybe I'd been asking if I'd played a Supporter (a trick for cheating, btw), which would indeed have justified his response. Maybe he was using similar shortcuts/sloppy plays, like using two search effects at the same time instead of playing them back-to-back separately.*** What I do remember is losing and losing badly as I wasn't doing great in the first place but I was furious with my opponent by this point and wanted to deck him (pun intended). Thankfully, I resisted during our actual match and some friends helped me extricate my head from my butt after, helping me calm down a bit. XP
*You no longer need to do this; both players are just expected to remember.
**The way Pokémon is played, you only get to declare an attack with your Active Pokémon and your turn ends immediately after the attack resolves.
***Search effects are common in Pokémon. If you get to search out any card (a bit rarer) you don't have to show your opponent the card(s) you searched from your deck. You always have to shuffle your deck after you perform a search and then give your opponent the option to cut or shuffle your deck. Up to a minute is permitted for shuffling, IIRC.
Author Notes:
Anyways... sometimes starting off a fight on the wrong foot can put you in a real bad way. For multiple reasons.